Lake Overturn (23 page)

Enrique and Miriam hadn’t spoken since the day he called her fish project stupid. They still sat next to each other in Miss Holly’s English class, but in stony silence. Miss Holly was their favorite. Once, after Enrique and Miriam collaborated on a dramatic reading of Maya Angelou, she had called them her “dynamic duo.” Still in her late twenties, she was the only teacher who made attempts at fashion, by crimping her hair on some days and putting it up with plastic clips on others. Her efforts to add emphasis to her broad, blank face resembled punctuation marks: blue bars over the eyes, an oversized beauty mark. She had a funny way of folding her hands when someone said something stupid that made the class laugh. A few days ago, Enrique had caught Miss Holly giving her dynamic duo a sad sigh from the back of the room. This affected him more than anything else, because Miss Holly’s versions of things seemed grander than reality, like the novels she taught. The alliance between him and Miriam had been more powerful and the current rift wider and more permanent than their real versions. He liked Miss Holly’s better.

As Enrique set up his display, other kids began to arrive and do the same, and parents and teachers began to congregate around the doughnut table. When he finished, he went on a little tour up and down the rows, checking out his competition. Most of the kids were from the smaller outlying towns, and most of their projects seemed to have been adapted from 4-H presentations—“The Life of the Sugar Beet” and “Pasteurization: What Is It?”—while a few were retellings of current events: “Can Chernobyl’s Radiation Reach Us?”

He returned to his project to explain it to visitors and wait for the judging to begin. A few parents meandered past with doughnuts cupped in napkins and gave him friendly nods, but none asked him questions.

Lina arrived, carrying a bucket. “The man was so nice,” she said. “He lent us tongs. He says you gotta use them, so you don’ get burned. It’s so cold that it burns your skin!”

“Wow!” Enrique said. He hid the bucket behind the table—he didn’t want anyone to know about the dry ice until the moment he put it in the bowl—and went to take off the lid.

“Careful,
mijo
, use these.” Lina held out a pair of thick, white rubber gloves. They looked like Mickey Mouse hands.

“Neat!” Enrique said. He put on the gloves, removed the lid, and gazed down through the steam at a cube wrapped in newspaper. With the tongs, he peeled the newspaper away.

An hour later, the rows were crowded with projects. The judges began going from table to table at the opposite end of the field house, which led Enrique to believe he would be near the last. This might be an advantage. And still, Miriam hadn’t arrived. He hoped she had decided to drop out.

Lina ate doughnuts and asked question after question but, Enrique noticed, didn’t ask about Mr. Hall’s gifts. “This is so exciting, baby. What is this newspaper stuff called again?”

“Papier-mâché. Same as a piñata.”

“Of course.”

“Ma, don’t get crumbs in the model.” Her presence was making him nervous just when he needed to relax. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Go follow the judges and see the other projects. I can’t do it myself. Then you can tell me how they are.”

“Good idea.”

Finally, Miriam arrived, carrying three large planks under her arm. She wore a homemade dress with belled sleeves like those of a choir robe. She dumped the planks on the table, then lifted her arm to brush sawdust from the satiny fabric.

To ignore her would be too weird, so Enrique gave her a quick “Hi.”

“Hello,” Miriam snapped. She gave herself a final brush-off and began to bustle around her area. The planks turned out to be a hinged wooden triptych, which she opened enough to stand on the table but not so much as to reveal its contents. Enrique filled the metal bowl in his model with water and removed some cobwebby strands the glue gun had left in the trees. Miriam’s space looked very empty next to Enrique’s; he would have felt sorry for her and might have even said something nice if she hadn’t been acting all secretive.

Then there were no more preparations to make. Enrique knew the presentation by heart. He sat down, straightened his clip-on tie, smoothed his greased-down hair, and waited.

After what seemed like ages, the judges rounded the corner at the end of the row, holding clipboards like shields over their hearts. Enrique stood.

There were three judges: the mayor of Chandler, who, during his twenty-eight-year tenure, had judged countless science fairs, fiddling competitions, and rodeo-queen pageants; a female veterinarian from the Chandler Large Animal Hospital, whose muscular forearms made one picture her holding down a sheep to administer a vaccine or twisting the tangled limbs of a colt from the womb; and a chemistry professor from Boise State University, who, perhaps ironically, had worn his lab coat, and who wheezed and sneezed and padded his flushed face with a handkerchief. Between tables, the veterinarian asked the professor if he wanted to step outside to clear his lungs, but he had thanked her and forged ahead. A few minutes later, they arrived at the table where a Mexican boy with shiny cheeks and shiny hair stood before what seemed to be a Swiss village threatened by a salad bowl.

Like the presenters who preceded him, Enrique took no notice of the professor’s condition. In a voice that had only a touch of a tremor, he began:

“I’m Enrique Cortez, and my project is entitled ‘What If It Happened Here?’ On August 21 of this year over seventeen hundred people died in the middle of the night. They were villagers in the mountains of Cameroon, a country in Africa. Not only did humans die, but hundreds of cows and untold numbers of wild animals. If you direct your eyes to Poster A, you will see some newspaper headlines and photos that were published right after this tragic event. Why care what happened in a country on the other side of the world? Well, as long as this mystery goes unsolved, how do we know it won’t happen at other locations around the globe, say, at our own Lake Overlook? Many scientists believe that poisonous gases from inside the earth could have seeped into Lake Nyos through fissures—that means cracks—in the lake floor. Since the lake is very deep—seven hundred feet—the heavy layers of water could have kept the gases trapped under the lake like the lid of a bottle keeps the bubbles in soda pop.”

From under the table, Enrique pulled a liter-sized bottle of club soda and gave it a vigorous shake. He had decided to add this part of the presentation at six o’clock this morning.

“Something may have happened at Lake Nyos—a rock slide or even just a strong wind—that caused the layers to shift, allowing the gases underneath to escape.” Enrique twisted the bottle open, and it hissed and sputtered. “A bottle of pop overflows when you open it because carbon dioxide is being suddenly released. The morning after the tragedy at Lake Nyos, the lake was suddenly red and muddy and its surface level had dropped by six feet. Maybe it was gases from under the lake that came up and killed all those people. This is a theory scientists call ‘lake overturn.’ ”

A scraping noise came from Miriam’s area. She was opening the triptych.

“But could lake overturn happen at Lake Overlook? There is no reason to think it couldn’t. Lake Overlook is roughly the same depth as Lake Nyos, and about three times the surface area.” Enrique, who really had no idea how deep Lake Overlook was, quickly scanned the judges’ faces for signs of disbelief. He found none. “The phenomenon of lake overturn is not yet understood, but if the amount of gas trapped under a lake is proportional to the weight of the water keeping it down, we could be in big trouble.”

Enrique put down the soda bottle and pulled on the gloves. He uncovered the bucket holding the dry ice and, using tongs, lifted out the steaming block.

“The lake in this model represents Lake Overlook, and the town represents Eula. At Lake Nyos, almost every oxygen-breathing organism in a fifteen-mile radius was killed. Given the size of Lake Overlook and its closeness to Eula . . . well, I’ll let the model explain.”

Enrique had come up with softened wording after the science club had called the project “creepy.”

He put the dry ice into the steel bowl, and the water began to bubble. A rich gray mist poured down the slope, braiding among the houses and trees, then gathering against the Plexiglas wall. The other kids began to leave their projects and gather around. The mist overflowed the box and cascaded down in tendrils to lick the floor. This was even better than Enrique had imagined.

Now came another part Enrique had added this morning: “If you direct your eyes to Poster C, you’ll see a list of poisonous gases that could be to blame. But add to this list one more: the very gas being released by the dry ice in my model, the very gas released from that soda bottle earlier, carbon dioxide. But, you might argue, carbon dioxide isn’t poisonous—it’s in every breath we breathe. Plants need it to survive. True, but, as you can see, carbon dioxide is heavier than air. If carbon dioxide escaped from Lake Nyos in a great enough volume, it would have blanketed the ground and suffocated all oxygen-breathing organisms. And, since there was no trace left afterward and the plants in the area weren’t damaged, this is what we believe happened. This
harmless
gas might have killed over seventeen hundred people in a matter of minutes.”

Enrique felt a twinge of guilt, but he
had
to use Gene’s discovery. It made the project complete. The same gas released by the dry ice could have killed all those people, and this fact tied everything into one neat, terrifying box. Gene would never find out. He himself had admitted he didn’t care about the science fair.

“In conclusion, lake overturn is a serious threat to lakeside communities. We should not rest until scientists have solved its riddles and figured out a way to prevent it from happening again. Until then, how can we be sure that lake overturn cannot happen at Lake Overlook?”

The group that had gathered broke out in applause. No one had applauded the other projects; the judges had simply thanked the students and moved on.

“Enrique,” said the veterinarian, “has this
lake overturn
ever happened before?”

“Yes. Two years ago, at another lake in Cameroon, the same thing appears to have taken place. Forty people were killed. But what caused it remains a mystery. We haven’t found any other recorded incidents, but, as I said, this phenomenon leaves no trace, so, who knows?”

“You said ‘we,’ Enrique,” said the mayor. “Who is your partner?”

Enrique had a lie prepared: “Gene Anderson, but he’s at home with a sore throat.”

“What is that stuff?” a little kid asked.

“Dry ice. It’s carbon dioxide in solid form. The fumes you see are actually carbon dioxide gas mixed with steam from the water. At Lake Nyos, it would have flowed in exactly the same way, but would have been invisible.”

The child stepped away from the model, blindly holding a hand out behind him for his mother’s leg.

“Thank you, young man,” said the professor. “Very impressive.” He gave the other judges a nod heavy with perseverance, and they obediently followed him to the next project.

Lina rushed forward and embraced Enrique. “My little genius,” she said. “You did so good.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

“I think you’re going to win, don’ you?”

“I hope so.”

Her voice became a whisper. “I didn’t see anyone could beat you,
mi vida
.”

April Martinez and Tommy Hess came through the crowd. They were both dressed in tight black clothes and black stocking caps. If it wasn’t for the hand-sewn stuffed-animal bacteria that hung from Tommy and bounced with his every step, they would have looked like a pair of cat burglars.

“Good job, Enrique,” said April.

“That was awesome,” Tommy added.

“Thanks, you guys,” Enrique said.

“What happens now?” Lina asked.

“Hold on, Ma. I want to see this.”

Miriam stood in front of her opened triptych which, in big letters in the center, said
EULA RESERVOIR: OUR MISUNDERSTOOD LAKE.

“Who here has ever water-skied in Eula Reservoir?” Miriam said loudly. “All right, then, who has ever taken a swim in Eula Reservoir? Really? I sure have. Okay, here’s an easy one: Who has ever
seen
Eula Reservoir? No one? Well, you’re all liars, because you have. In fact, many of you standing here can see Eula Reservoir from your front lawns. You just call it by its nickname, Lake Overlook.

“In 1880, what we now call Lake Overlook—Eula Reservoir—was merely an empty field in a large cattle ranch owned by Robert Dewey, one of Eula’s founders. It was determined that, in order to make the area around Eula suitable for farming, Walker’s Creek should be dammed about eight miles before it flowed into the Snake River. Robert Dewey sold the land to the city, and the dam was built. This photo shows the dam under construction. It’s really just a fifteen-foot dirt levee. And this photo shows the field that would become Eula Reservoir. You can see that, at its deepest, the reservoir would only be twenty-five feet deep, not even as high as the roof of this field house. Not deep enough for much gas to collect under it.”

A couple of observers glanced at Enrique, but most missed the reference to his project. Their gazes had already wandered—to wristwatches, to the tables where the lunch ladies were putting out Styrofoam boxes, even back to Enrique’s project. Several of the smaller kids had returned to cautiously put their fingers in the mist that still fell from the diorama. Enrique was enraged and, in spite of himself, intrigued. Where had Miriam found those photos? The landscape looked as old-fashioned as the handlebar mustaches of the men who stood before it with their shovels and picks. Even the sagebrush looked antique, the way it polka-dotted the hillsides.

“The name Lake Overlook seems to have come about in the thirties, when the city put out a road sign directing drivers to a hill, now part of Overlook Park, where they could enjoy a view of the lake and surrounding countryside. People mistakenly thought the sign was directing them to the lake itself, not the lake
overlook
. Hence, Eula Reservoir became Lake Overlook. Silly, isn’t it?